That garden sweet, that Lady fair,
And all sweet shapes and odours there,
In truth have never passed away:
'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they.
For love, and beauty, and delight,
There is no death nor change; their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.'
11. 6, 7. _We decay Like corpses in a charnel_, &c. Human life consists
of a process of decay. While living, we are consumed by fear and grief;
our disappointed hopes swarm in our living persons like worms in our
corpses.
+Stanza 40,+ 1. 1. _He has outsoared the shadow of our night._ As human
life was in the last stanza represented as a dream, so the state of
existence in which it is enacted is here figured as night.
1. 5. _From the contagion of the world's slow stain._ It may be said
that 'the world's slow stain'--the lowering influence of the aims and
associations of all ordinary human life--is the main subject-matter of
Shelley's latest important poem, _The Triumph of Life._
1. 9. _With sparkless ashes._ See the cognate expression, 'thy cold
embers,' in st. 38.
+Stanza 41,+ 1.
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